SIGGreen Virtual workshop Nov 12 2010

SIGGreen Virtual Workshop, November 12 2010
Challenges when digital services for
sustainable everyday travel is
innovated
Raul Carlsson1, Anders Hjalmarsson1,2, Mikael Lind1,2, Daniel Rudmark1,3
1Viktoria institute, Sweden
2University of Borås, School of Business & Informatics, Sweden
3University of Borås, InnovationLab, Sweden
http://siggreen-icis2010-workshop.wikispaces.com/
Abstract for short paper, discussed at
The Virtual SIGGreen Online Workshop November 12th 2010

Problem background
• Personal travel is expected to increase,
according to Traffic Authorities, from 2,200 000
to 3 000 000 (36%) 2005-2025 in Western Sweden.
• Transport-related CO2 emissions should decrease
by 4% in 2010 and 75% in 2050 (compared with
1990)
• To cope with CO2 reductions it estimated that the
share for public transport must increase from 24%
to 40% by 2025 and that car riding to and from
work must go from 65% to 35%
• A shift from cars to public transportation means
a step towards reaching eco-goals

Energy informatics
(Watson et al 2010)
• Basic idea: Energy + Information < Energy
• Energy informatics
how information systems can be used to reduce energy
consumption, and contribute practical solutions to
advance environmental sustainability.
• Energy informatics framework

Eco-goals
(Watson et al 2010)
• Eco-effectiveness
– Commuters actively change their behavior and
consume lesser natural resources to achieve the
same travel goal.
• Eco-equity
– By using transportation with better
environmental performance, each commuter
consumes less resources which leaves more
resources for future generations.
• Eco-efficiency
– A shift creates however a need for increasing
the eco-efficiency of transportation assets, as
the volume of travelers of share resources is
increased.

The IS-researchers responsibility
 To investigate and evaluate how IS/IT may
improve the environmental performance of
the systems they work with…
 …and in particular study if IT/IS may serve
as a persuasive force (e.g. Fogg 2002) to
stimulate shifts towards more eco-friendly
alternatives of transportation.
For example, to investigate how IS/IT may
increase the eco-efficiency of transportation
assets when the volume of travelers of shared
resources increases as a consequence a shift
from cars to public transportation!
This calls for a wider perspective on
environmentally sustainable development

Sustainable Innovation
Green IS
Green IT
The sustainable innovation approach
(van Osch & Avital 2010)
• From Green IT to Sustainable Innovation
– This perspective provides valuable augmentation to
existing green IS/IT frameworks, as it redirect the
attention to different facets of sustainability and
by highlighting the need for company-driven and
multi-stakeholder innovation to address
sustainability-related challenges.
Approaches to
sustainabilityFocus of
sustainability
efforts
Reducing IT Footprint
Managing environmental
footprint
Proactively generating
overall value - social
environmental and
economic for all
stakeholders

Sustainable everyday travel: the transport
authority vision
People should be able to plan their trip in a way suitable
for them as individuals while at the same time being
supported to choose sustainable alternatives. In practice
they should be able to base decisions regarding trips on
information about the reliability of transport services
and traffic, on the price, and on the environmental
performance, provided to them via digital context based
information services.
 An example: The TravelGreener demonstrator
 In order to enable in innovation of digital
services for sustainable everyday travel,
different challenges must be prevailed.

Sustainable everyday travel: some challenges
impeding sustainable innovation
1. Availability of data for sustainable innovation
– The challenge is not a lack of data, but rather to have accurate
data of different types for different usage situations.
2. Open access to data
– The challenge is knowledge how to establish distributed service
innovation based on sufficient access to data from data providers
via open API’s.
3. Manage innovation towards eco-goals and sustainability
– The challenge is knowledge how to enable distributed service
innovation steered towards eco-goals and economic and social
values.
4. Lack of knowledge about consumers life situations and needs
– The challenge is knowledge how to facilitate distributed service
innovation that meets the needs that different categories of
consumers have when public transport is or should be utilized.
5. Good solutions, but no utilization and no desired impact
– The challenge is knowledge how to accomplish sustainable usage of
innovated solutions.
6. Lack of feedback in the eco-system
– The challenge is the lack of different types of feedback channels
from and to different stakeholders in the public transport context,
about the effects that efforts and outcomes from sustainable
innovation have on eco-efficiency, eco-effectiveness and eco-
equity.

Towards a eco-system which enables innovation
for sustainable everyday travel
• Energy informatics concepts interpreted:
– Flow network: transport system.
– Consumers: traveler's using physical services in
the transport system supported by digital
services.
– Suppliers: providers of physical services,
digital services and data.
– Government: traffic and travel authorities
– Sensor network: systems which provides data that
can be analyzed to determine the optimum use of
a flow network.
– Sensitized object: a physical good that a actor
in the eco-system owns or manages and has the
capability to sense and report data about its
use.
– Information systems: components in the eco-
systems as well as the eco-systems as a whole.
– Eco-goals: objectives as drivers toward
sustainable everyday travel

Towards a eco-system which enables innovation for sustainable
everyday travel

Preliminary reflections
• The pluralistic notion of stakeholders
in the eco-system
– E.g. a consumer may also be a supplier, and a supplier
may also be a consumer, and the government may also be
both suppliers and consumers in the eco-system
• The eco-system requires a powerhouse –
the developer zone?
• In the eco-system a sensor network
contains of both digital and analog
feedback channels, feeding back
information of sorts to different
consumers
• The feedback data provides the means to
both improve the digital services and
the physical services, as well as other
aspects in the flow network

SIGGreen Virtual workshop Nov 12 2010

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SIGGreen Virtual workshop Nov 12 2010